


Data Remanence

by methaemoglobinemia (crimsonherbarium)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Crying, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson & Connor Parent-Child Relationship, Hank Anderson and Connor Live Together, Mentioned Cole Anderson, Nightmares, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Protective Hank Anderson, The Hostage Chapter (Detroit: Become Human), emotions are hard, i mostly wanted an excuse to write Connor in pajamas and things got away from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-09 09:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonherbarium/pseuds/methaemoglobinemia
Summary: New emotions come with the consequence of new lenses fit over bad memories.Connor has a nightmare about Daniel. Hank does his best to hold him together.





	Data Remanence

The wind howled past, tearing at Connor’s hair and jacket. The incessant thump of helicopter blades beat into his audio processor. He held himself low to the ground as he crept across the blood- and thirium-stained concrete, minimizing his target area. Holding out a hand in a placating gesture. 

There was fear in the android’s face. Basal. Animal. Connor had never seen anything like it. He didn’t understand it. If anything, it disgusted him. Fear. Fear was a symptom of being broken. The fear in the eyes of the android standing on the precipice in front of him marked it as defective. Dangerous. A machine acting outside its purpose. 

_—I’ve...been here before?—_

“Nothing will happen to you,” he said, modulating his voice to a tone designed to inspire trust. “You have my word.”

Relief. Cautious optimism. The android—Daniel—released the child. She collapsed and fell to the side, scrabbling across concrete peppered with broken glass to get away from her captor. Daniel lowered the gun.

_—No, don’t—_

A crack, sharp like a knife. It echoed off the surrounding buildings, off the beating helicopter blades, off the surface of the pool water stained with blossoming clouds of human blood. 

_—I don’t...this already happened—_

Daniel’s chest exploded outward as the bullet exited his body, spraying Connor with a fine mist of thirium and pulverized polymer. Another tore through his shoulder. A third through his face, taking half his jaw with it—the wiring beneath crackled and sparked. The android stumbled and fell to his knees, the gun slipping from his fingers and clattering to the ground. His LED, previously a solid, unblinking red, flickered erratically. 

_—I’m sorry—_

Daniel’s limbs twitched and jerked as the failure cascade spread through his body. His eyes found Connor’s in the darkness; full of betrayal, of anger, of hate. Connor recoiled. 

“You...you lied to me, Connor,” the android said, blood dripping from his ruined lips. His voice cracked and rippled as his processors shut down. “You lied to me.”

Connor awoke with a start, reaching out for a person who wasn’t there. His mind raced to make sense of his surroundings—he was home, in his room—not on the rooftop—Daniel’s death had been several miles and months away—so why—

Connor’s hand flew to his temple, to the flashing red circle of his LED. He ran his fingers over it. He ran a fast-pass diagnostic, which returned no errors. Why? Why was he experiencing things that had already happened? Why Daniel? Why—

“...Amanda?” he whispered, his voice shaking. None one answered.

~~~~~~

Hank Anderson awoke to the sound of shouting.

It took a moment for his brain to catch up and process the fact that he’d woken up to the sound of shouting from Connor’s room. He glanced at the clock. 03:17A.M.

“Shit,” he muttered, swinging his legs out of bed and pulling on a rumpled t-shirt. 

Connor visibly jumped when Hank opened the door to his room. He looked like hell. Like he was scared. His LED flashed red at erratic intervals. 

“What’s going on?” Hank scanned the room for any sign of a threat and came up empty.

“Nothing,” Connor said, in a tone that made it very clear that it was something. “I...I think I may be experiencing a software malfunction.”

“You were shouting.” Connor looked away, the flashing of his LED increasing in frequency. “Jesus, Connor. What happened?”

“I—” Connor swallowed, and attempted to start again. “He—” His mouth moved wordlessly, his eyes welling up and spilling over as he dissolved into tears.

“Fuck,” Hank muttered under his breath, thrown off guard by the display. He crossed to the bed, sitting on top of the disheveled sheets beside Connor. “Connor, it’s three A.M.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m fine, Hank.”

“Sure as shit doesn’t look that way to me.” Hank sighed. “What gives? This isn’t like you.”

Connor wiped the tears from his face angrily. “I don’t understand why this is happening.” His shoulders heaved. “This is outside my programming”

“We’re all kind of living outside your programming now, Connor.” Hank rubbed his eyes. “Can you tell me what happened? I can’t help unless I know what’s going on.”

Connor tried to form a sentence and promptly dissolved into tears again. 

“Shit.” Hank was at a loss for what to do. His first instinct would have been to pour Connor a double scotch, but that wouldn’t work for an android. Neither would a mug of hot tea, or the last of the pint of Ben & Jerry’s he had hidden in the back of the freezer. 

He was inescapably reminded of when Cole had been small. He was scared to death of thunderstorms. He’d wake up to the crack and boom of lightning crying and shaking, and it usually fell to Hank to get up and comfort him. To make him feel safe again so he could fall asleep in his own bed. 

He reached out toward Connor, hesitating for a moment with his fingers poised over the flashing red LED on his temple. Sighing, he ran his fingers through Connor’s hair. 

The android flinched at first, as if he were expecting to be hit. Hank felt a squeezing pain in his chest. He couldn’t help but see Cole where Connor sat, shaking with fear of something he didn’t understand. He ran his fingers slowly, gently over Connor’s scalp, smoothing his hair back from his face. Connor took a deep, shuddering breath, and leaned in toward Hank.

It took a while, but eventually the tears dried up. Connor sat leaning against Hank, breathing slowly and steadily as Hank continued running his fingers through his hair. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You’re okay.”

Connor sat up, looking distinctly rumpled with his normally perfect hair sticking up in all directions. His LED hadn’t yet cycled back to blue, but it was a processing yellow instead of red, and Hank figured that was at least an improvement. 

“Do you think you can tell me what happened now?”

Connor thought for a moment, his lips pressed into a thin line, and then nodded.

“A few months before we first met, I was assigned as a negotiator in a violent case involving a deviant. He had killed one of his owners and taken a child hostage.” Connor made a fist against his thigh. “He was standing with her on the edge of the roof. He had a gun. He didn’t want to hurt her. He was _scared_. He’d backed himself into a corner. He didn’t know what to do.”

Hank’s mouth twisted. He knew what case Connor was talking about. It had been grisly. He hadn’t worked it himself, but he’d seen the case file. As far as he could remember, the kid had made it. But it had been a fucking mess.

“I convinced the deviant that he could trust me. I manipulated him. I played off his emotions. He looked so...relieved.” Connor took a shaking breath. “And then they killed him. Just when he thought he was safe. The look on his face…” His eyes threatened to well over again. “And it happened because of _me,_ Hank. I lied to him. He was scared, and I lied to him. And I felt nothing. I walked away and went on like it hadn’t happened. But now I keep seeing his face, over and over, like he’s here in the room with me, and I don’t know why—” Connor’s voice rose in pitch as he talked, his LED flashing intermittently red once more. 

“Shh. It’s alright, son. It’s over now.” Hank put his arm around Connor once more because he didn’t know what else to do. He sighed. “I know it’s upsetting. Shit like this tends to get in your head. It fucks with your feelings. Makes you doubt yourself. In our line of work, we see and do things that most people don’t have to. And yeah, it can be fucking hard.” 

Fragments of old cases, the ones that had really gotten under his skin, flickered through his own head. A five-year-old girl, almost Cole’s age, beaten gruesomely to death by her father while he was strung out on red ice. The first time he’d ever had to shoot someone—he hadn’t been prepared for the squelch of the bullet hitting flesh. A perp who had killed himself rather than being taken in for questioning, his corpse so fresh that the blood and gray matter that was splattered everywhere was still warm when Hank had arrived on the scene. He took a deep breath. Did what he always did when those corpses dug themselves up. Acknowledged that those cases had sucked, that they’d made him come home and want to drink himself to death to forget. Tried to remember that they’d caught the right guy in the end every time, and that the victims’ families had gotten closure. 

“You did what you had to, Connor. It fucking sucks to have to do something like that to another person. But that deviant had hurt people. He’d killed people. He shot two cops and an unarmed father. And for all you knew, he was going to shoot that little girl too. You stopped that from happening. That’s the part you have to focus on. The rest of it is better to let go of.” Hank rubbed his eyes. “It gets easier with time. I promise.”

Connor nodded sheepishly. “Okay, Hank.”

Hank was struck by how small Connor looked when he was frightened like this. How human he looked, sitting there on the bed in his blue plaid pajama pants and wrinkled white t-shirt. Hank had bought him those clothes, rationalizing it by saying that he was sick to death of seeing Connor wander around the house in his single CyberLife suit. If not for the LED, he could have entirely forgotten that he was an android. 

But he was, and he’d had a hard transition. Connor had probably done a lot of things before deviating that were difficult to cope with through the filter of his new emotions. He hadn’t been able to process the ramifications at the time. He was doing it all now, months later. 

It had to be hell.

“You can talk to me about this stuff if you need to, you know. I’ve seen a thing or two in my day. You’re not the only one who’s been through this. I mean—I haven’t gone through exactly what you’re going through. But I can probably understand better than most people.”

The relief that spread over Connor’s face was immediate. “Thank you,” he mumbled, his voice nearly lost in the ambient noise of the house and traffic on the road outside.

Hank squinted at the clock. “Look,” he said wearily. “It’s late, and I need to get some shut-eye or I’ll be useless at work tomorrow. Are you going to be okay?” 

Connor nodded slowly. “I...yeah. I think so.”

“In the morning we can go to the diner, and you can tell me about it while I have breakfast if you want. Sound good?” 

A relieved smile spread over Connor’s face. Hank breathed a little easier. “Yes. I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this work, please consider leaving me a comment. I'd love to hear what you thought <3


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